Tag Archives: words lost in translation

False friends are the worst. Just ask Holden Caulfield — hehated phonies with a passion. The Catcher in the Rye is littered with diatribes against phony friends and phonies in general. In linguistics, however, a false friend is something entirely different than a phony friend. The term “false friend” is a shortened version on the longer term “false friend of a translator” coined by two French translators, Jules Derocquigny and Maxime Koessler, in 1928. False friends (in French, faux amis) are words in two different languages that may sound or look familiar but differ significantly in meaning. This is not a case of “lost in translation” but rather “mangled in translation.” For example, in Dutch “die” means “that one”; in English it means “stop living.” Unlike a false friend in real life that can leave you distraught or annoyed, a linguistic false friend can cause you some embarrassment. For multinational companies that name their products unwittingly using a false friend, it creates an expensive marketing disaster (recall Chevrolet’s Nova — in Spanish it means “doesn’t go” — imagine, Chrysler developed a car that doesn’t go…). Here are some common false friends drawn from various languages: